this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The lack of action on this is evidence of mankind's selfishness and shortsightedness. I hope a technological solution is forthcoming, because political solutions have failed spectacularly. The oil industry has invested so much in disinformation that they may destroy our habitat forever for some temporary shareholder value.

At 1.5 degrees C, sea levels are expected to rise up to ~30 inches, which would put huge parts of New Orleans, Corpus Christie, Key west, Southern Florida, SF's south bay, and Miami underwater. See what goes underwater using this NOAA map.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think we will be saved just in time by nuclear fusion and nobody will learn from this, just like nobody learned from COVID. The majority will probably shrug and go "see, wasn't that bad".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish I shared your optimism. A deus ex machina solution is extremely unlikely. It would be more effective to attempt to forcibly sieze control of the mechanisms of pollution than to hope for surprise salvation. When you are being actively killed, sometimes violence really is the answer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

When you are being actively killed, sometimes violence really is the answer.

Yep, "violence is never the answer" are words of those who will end up dead at the hands of violent people. Violence is the last option and should only be used when all other avenues have been exhausted, but to say it's never an option is just naive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even if we did develop fusion, how long would it take to switch to it and would it even be economical? A ton of places still use coal and other fossil fuels simply because they're cheap or were already built. It's hard to make assumptions about how much fusion would cost when we still don't have it. Nuclear fission's fuel is cheap (cause so little is needed), yet nuclear is still insanely expensive because building the plants is a difficult task mired in red tape and the general public is afraid of it (on that note, I'm not sure how many people even have a concept of fusion beyond perhaps what Spiderman 2 made them believe).

There's also the divide in the world. Even if the rich western countries got fusion, would everyone? The west also got covid vaccines early while much of the rest of the world had to wait. And further drawing on the covid analogy, some countries pretended there wasn't an issue, which already is going on with climate change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If we haven't learned by the time we get fusion that climate is global and should be tackled globally, we deserve extinction.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thots and prayers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

He will sort us out

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

PSA. All hands on deck! Do at least 2 of the following:

  1. Individual action - reduce your emissions
  2. Social action - rally support, persuade others to act
  3. Political action - vote, run, call, protest, all levels
  4. Financial support - self explanatory
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's sad how many people with positive motivations still look around and delude themselves into believing the small class of people doing this, the ones that own their own regulators, courts, governments, and means of state violence and propaganda, can still be somehow pressured or reasoned with into abandoning or even lessoning short term profit in the name of our species having a decent future.

Force against the ones that most profit off this system, that are willing to kill billions trying to satiate their insatiable greed, is the only way to even begin to address our doom. And reading the room on that option, we are very, very, very doomed.

They know what they're doing, they don't care. They don't care. Do you understand how much they don't care? They don't care about the species, they don't care about their own grandkids, let alone your peasant capital battery slave grandkids. What indication have the owners ever given that they can be talked out of short term profit at your expense? It's laughable.

Political action? Seriously? Most modern politicians became politicians to take their bribes in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

People that are truly serious about this aren't deluded into thinking we can take shorter showers and solve the problem, but they aren't likely advertising potential effective options on social media. I don't know anyone personally who cares about the climate who doesn't know that more drastic measures need to be taken if anything is to be helped at all. If a company can profit off of something they won't stop unless forced.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The world emitted half a billion tons more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in the year the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius was released.

I'm wheezing in my chair. This is hilarious. Sad, but hilarious. We're speed running our demise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm wheezing in my chair.

It's all the pollution.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Worse than they feared* Saying worse than they hoped implied that hoped it would be bad

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No? Worse than they hoped implies that they hoped (wished) it would be better than it actually is.?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And nobody is gonna do anything

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

People are doing things. It's that it's not enough yet; we need to go from supplementing fossil fuels and displacing them at a national level to actively displacing their use on a global scale.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The game is rigged and the people are too deluded into believing they need their oppressors for there to be any hope. The 3,000 or so billionaires on Earth could be stopped... If they weren't defended by legions of ignorant "love me senpai" house peasants who buy into the lie that they'll be let into the little club/climate change bunker for their loyalty and defense of this sociopathic economy and poisoned civilization.

Humanity will have to learn the hard way. I only hope whoever is left does actually learn the primary lesson of this cataclysm: the dangers of letting human greed take the wheel of civilization ever again. Greed is worse than hate. Greed kills with a shrug and cold, reptilian indifference. Greed doesn't even care who it kills, that's an externality and someone else's problem. People who kill out of hate at least cared about their victims in some way, instead of just seeing them as another speedbump to profit.

If you let it, greed won't let go until civilization crashes as it hunts wildly for new vectors of exploitation to try to satiate its insatiable gluttony. It will just propagandize most of its victims to defend it against their interests with false promises that they will personally benefit from the destruction.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll be putting my thumb on the scale to favor action in any way I can.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hey, you get enough people together to be effective at tearing down the gates, going where the owners are, and doing what we should have done decades ago, I'll be there with bells on.

Instead people will shout "eat the rich!" on the internet until doomsday, and no dinner will ever be served.

There is a small, specific class of people that must be dealt with to even begin to address this. They hold all the keys, all the cards, all the hard power. Humanity lacks the will. And the owners make fun of people like you for believing trying to reason with them will ever do anything for the long term survival of the species when there's still another dollar to exploit.

If you aren't willing to be a part of handling that problem, you aren't serious either. They own the "justice" systems that would hold them responsible. They own the media that tell most peasants what to think and who to blame. They own the governments that were supposed to regulate them. Force is the only practical option. One the people won't exercise out of either rational fear of the individual consequences, or ignorant faith in their oppressors.

Go ahead and beg instead, I'm sure you believe we can change the outcome peaceably, lol. Scientists and rational people have been for half a century, begging the owners to look at the hard data of what they're doing and stop for the sake of their own species. How has that been going?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the tough pill to swallow that everyone is indeed avoiding.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well unfortunately for humanity, minimizing, reframing, or simply ignoring man-made climate change doesn't matter. Distorting reality works great on humans, probably why humans are so eager to try it on climate change, but the physics of our little fishbowl are absolute, it is immune our stupid little human vs. human capitalist propaganda tricks we pull.

I've come to find that almost poetic in the absense of hope. All the lies we tell each other to fuck one another over to get a little more than our neighbors, "I don't have anything" to the hungry homeless person, "raising interest rates to increase unemployment will help poor people" from the fed to the willful idiots, on and on.

Say what you will about the coming famines, droughts, superstorms, and novel viruses that come will bring our species to its knees, all of those events will be honest. The climate warned us, it was measurable for over half a century, it basically screamed "there WILL be consequences" as the scientists translated for it. I'm positive millions to billions of willful fools will cry and claim no one saw it coming, but climate change, more than any human government or company in human history, will be Promises Made, Promises Kept.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's that time of week I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My friends this ship has sailed as far back as the 1970s- 50 years later and we're still dicking around with who to blame and pretending like we're going to make some drastic change at the last second. Lol at this point the best we can do is care for one another and accept the end (when it finally ~~affects~~ crushes your part of the world) with as much grace as you can muster

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Meaningful changes in energy systems are starting to happen. It's too late for zero change, but we're likely to avoid some of the worst case scenarios.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've given up. The people in power have the responsibility to fix this. They all took on that responsibility when they took the title. Not my problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Then work on changing the people in power if you're in a part of the world where that's possible, and work on making the changes that need to happen part of how you make a living no matter where you are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And how are you supposed to do that? You can vote, but that is just one person. Look at the election results & polls of green parties & politicians who want to do something. No one actually wants that, otherwise they'd be voting differently. Everyone loves to cry about the big corporations or the bad politicians but none of them want to do anything themselves or be in any way shape or form affected by required measures that are needed to reduce emissions. Because yes, at this stage it will cost us, all of us, and it will just get more and more expensive to fix with each passing year - until there's nothing possible to fix anymore.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Voting is a start.

You can also:

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, been there done that. Evidently none of those things actually help. It's a drop in the ocean. Again, the majority of people does not care, or rather the contrary, gets angry at those who do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Each of us is a drop, but our drops together are the ocean. If you don't want to get involved, I can't make you, but don't discourage others if you want to stick around.